The Gorman dilemma
When do you call a talented young hitter up?
When Nolan Gorman was drafted by the Cardinals with their 19th pick of the 2018 MLB Draft, he was the first player born in the 21st century ever drafted. Now almost four years later, Gorman is a week shy of his 22nd birthday, a consensus top-35 prospect, and one of the hottest hitters in Triple-A.
Gorman has hit .321/.372/.769 with 11 home runs in 20 games for the Memphis Redbirds this season, which works out for a 189 wRC+. The fourth highest wRC+ among Triple-A players this season. Trayce Thompson, who is third, was just called up by the Padres. All three are significantly older than Gorman is on a prospect development scale.
With the Cardinals’ offense struggling along in a very feast-or-famine way, there has been a lot of clamoring to get the team’s 21-year-old #2 prospect up and in the St. Louis lineup as quickly as possible. But if the Cardinals chose to call Gorman up today, the question they have to be ready to answer is where does he play? I just don’t think it’s an easy question to answer when you factor everything in.
The Cardinals are a team built around run prevention and defense, and this is how Busch Stadium plays. It’s not a stadium where you are just going to out slug the world, so 11 home runs looks nice on the stat sheet, but it doesn’t necessarily translate to offensive success in Busch Stadium. I think the Cardinals actually might have a reverse Coors Field thing going on with their offense, but that’s probably another topic for another day. So, for a player whose power is putting him on the prospect map, that’s not an automatic ticket.
Gorman, drafted as a third baseman, moved to second base last season after the acquisition of Nolan Arenado. He is still fairly new at the position with only about 90 games worth of innings at the position in the minors.
If you brought Gorman up to play second base, that would move Tommy Edman to shortstop, downgrading the defense at two positions.
That’s because there are some questions here about Edman’s ability to play shortstop given that a career minor league shortstop has started just 15 games there in the Majors and played even fewer than 15 games worth of innings. In the minors he was shifted away from shortstop for Edmundo Sosa on their way up. That tells you where he ranks defensively among the three possible shortstop options on the roster. The question, of course, is how much of a defensive gap there is there?
But, much like the addition of Gorman, moving Edman would be about getting his bat in the lineup over his glove. And I’d argue that Edman has not just overperformed offensively so far this season, but ridiculously so. Enough that I would not make any drastic moves expecting him to be a bat that you have to fit into the lineup.
The other option for the Cardinals would be to let him play DH against right-handed batters. But even this presents its own set of problems for Gorman’s development.
Like most young left-handed hitters, Gorman still needs work against left-handed pitching. However, I do always argue that a young left-handed hitter can’t adequately prepare for MLB level left-handed pitching in the minors because left-handed pitchers usually ascend to the major leagues much faster than any other type of player. So, he needs reps against them to continue to develop. In the minors, those reps are about developing the tools that you can then apply to learning in the majors. And I believe you need 300-400 at bats against left-handed pitching before we know what a left-handed hitter will bring to the plate in those situations. But then they also have Albert Pujols, and as I pointed out last week, he’s the guy I want taking every DH at bat against left-handed pitching this season. So, Gorman shouldn’t see many left-handed pitchers the rest of the season if he were called up.
So, if the Cardinals bring Gorman up, they’d be sacrificing defense on the field or his development as a player. And that’s in a best-case scenario where he shows up and hits. At some point the needs of the big league club will take over, but at this point there are too many downsides.
Personally, I’m a fan of letting a player get most of a second trip through Triple-A before getting him to the majors regularly. I just feel like that’s usually the difference between guys who quickly finds a slump and guys who have a little bit of staying power. Gorman made his Triple-A debut on June 29, 2021. So, he’s still short of a full season there and, ideally, in my opinion, he should be there until much later this year and mix him in to playing some other positions and then you bring him up and he becomes a DH who you can also play around the field to give guys days off.
Where does that leave the Cardinals for the rest of this season.
The Cardinals are a team that usually waits until the first couple weeks of June to make any moves that you’d describe as a big shakeup move. Doing something with DeJong would be that. And while DeJong’s bat has struggled, he’s not the reason this team isn’t productive on offense.
DeJong is not a central offensive figure for this lineup, and he has a better WAR than Paul Goldschmidt, Tyler O’Neill, and Dylan Carlson. Those three guys were 1-2-3 in the lineup to start the season. Only Goldschmidt has a track record you can look at. O’Neill is coming off a career year, and Carlson wouldn’t be the first Cardinal prospect to experience a severe sophomore slump. This lineup depends on these guys producing. You hope a player like DeJong would help pick up some slack, but that’s not why his name is on the lineup card.
DeJong’s value is buoyed by his defense. Sure, defense doesn’t show up in the box score, but it does still bring value to the club. How much value is always the question, but I’m sure professional analytics departments have studied this in detail. Especially a club that has a pitching staff who puts the ball in play on a regular basis and has specific defensive needs as a result.
That’s part of the reason why the Cardinals are being patient with DeJong. Players who are great defensively will always get a longer runway to find themselves than those who don’t play great defense, and that’s the way it should be. But Mozeliak did essentially put DeJong on notice this weekend, saying that if things don’t change that they’ll start looking at other options and that Gorman will be one. That should enthuse Cardinals fans who want both DeJong out of the lineup and an opportunity for Gorman.
You can’t just take a couple hot weeks as gospel for what a player is going to be. Likewise, you can’t just take a couple cold weeks either. We’re not even a month into the season yet. Am I biased? Yes and yes. But front office decision maker don’t get the luxury of just throwing players away if they have a bad 3-4 weeks, especially when we’re talking about a player who still has about $13 million still owing to him. You need to figure out what they’re going to give you over the long term and that takes playing them on a regular basis. It’s what they’re going to need to do with Gorman when he does finally get the call, and it’s what they should give DeJong to confirm that he’s not up to the task.
Who’s Hot, Hitter’s Edition
(minimum 15 plate appearances the last 10 days, out of 311 qualifying hitters)
Paul Goldschmidt, 205 wRC+ (T-24th in MLB)
Harrison Bader, 156 wRC+ (T-68th in MLB)
Nolan Arenado, 152 wRC+ (74th in MLB)
Tommy Edman, 129 wRC+ (T-104th in MLB)
Andrew Knizner, 124 wRC+ (112th in MLB)
Who’s Hot, Pitcher’s Edition
(minimum 15 batters faced the last 10 days, out of 303 qualifying pitchers)
Dakota Hudson, .193 wOBA (T-31st in MLB)
Miles Mikolas, .218 wOBA (58th in MLB)
Andre Pallante, .295 wOBA (T-149th in MLB)
Nick Wittgren, .320 wOBA (173rd in MLB)
Steven Matz, .364 wOBA (T-213th in MLB)
Cardinals’ 2022 WAR Leaders (of 1,557 MLB players)
3B Nolan Arenado, 1.9 WAR (2nd in MLB)
2B Tommy Edman, 1.4 WAR (T-7th in MLB)
CF Harrison Bader, 0.7 WAR (T-58th in MLB)
RHP Miles Mikolas, 0.6 WAR (T-78th in MLB)
LHP Steven Matz, 0.6 WAR (T-78th in MLB)
C Andrew Knizner, 0.4 WAR (T-152nd in MLB)
RHP Ryan Helsley, 0.4 WAR (T-152nd in MLB)
RHP Adam Wainwright, 0.3 WAR (T-200th in MLB)
Giovanny Gallegos, 0.2 WAR (T-283rd in MLB)
Paul DeJong, 0.1 WAR (T-388th in MLB)
